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Police confirm DVD player found in Tesla Autopilot wreck
A day after we learned that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating a fatal crash involving Tesla's Autopilot feature, more details have emerged. The Florida Highway Patrol confirmed to Reuters that a portable DVD player was found in the wreckage. The driver of the truck that was crossing the highway when it was struck by the Model S told the Associated Press that the driver was playing a Harry Potter movie at the time. He said he could he could hear it playing after the car hit a telephone pole further down the road.
Tesla under investigation after first Autopilot-related death
The NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) is investigating a collision that occurred when a Tesla Model S in Autopilot mode crashed into a tractor trailer resulting in the death of the driver. This is the first fatality linked to the automaker's vehicles while in the semi-autonomous driving mode.
Cops nab man for crashing a drone into the Empire State building
A New Jersey native's drone has recently crashed into the Empire State building, and unlike the person whose machine hit Seattle's Great Wheel, he didn't get away with it. Authorities have arrested the man an NBC affiliate identified as Sean Nivin Riddle after his drone struck the iconic building's 40th floor, ultimately landing on the 35th. While authorities didn't mention what the drone's purpose was in flying around NYC, a man with the same name tweeted that he was using the UAV to film until it hit the skyscraper.
Apple's Safari browser was broken
iOS and OS X users around the world are experiencing serious issues with Apple's Safari. Many are reporting that typing into the browser's search box crashes the browser instantly. The issue was highlighted by developer Steve Troughton-Smith, who worked out it has something to do with Apple's search suggestions feature. It seems likely a server somewhere is down and that's ruining things for people. Problems have been reported over three continents, and we've confirmed the bug ourselves.
Web link crashes Safari on your iPhone or Mac
You've probably run into websites (or buggy browsers) that have inadvertently bogged down your devices, but there's one lurking out there that causes very intentional grief. If you visit crashsafari.com (we're not going to link it, for obvious reasons), the site will generate an ever-larger character string that creates a lot of problems. As the name implies, it'll reliably crash Apple's Safari browser on Macs -- and on iOS devices, you'll probably need to reboot. The code also appears to affect Chrome on Android and PCs, although not to such a severe and predictable degree.
Someone crashed a drone into Seattle's Great Wheel
Tonight Seattle news stations are reporting that someone hit the Great Wheel ride with a drone (hopefully it's not one of Amazon's). There were no injuries or damage to the Ferris Wheel, while the drone apparently crashed onto the patio of a nearby restaurant. According to KIRO 7, the owner of the drone has not been located, something the Department of Transportation probably thinks that its plan for a national drone registry could help solve. On YouTube there are a number of videos from people safely flying drones around the massive ride, but incidents like this show how a few careless owners may ruin the hobby for those that operate their aircraft responsibly.
This web game shows that landing a Falcon 9 rocket is pretty much impossible
You thought the carrier landing stage in Top Gun was a nightmare to pull off? Then get ready to scream obscenities you didn't know you knew at MIT Media Lab's SpaceX Falcon 9 Lander. This 8-bit web-game combines all of the pulse pounding excitement of landing a multi-million dollar prototype spacecraft with the rage-inducing control scheme from a 1983 Yugo. The goal of the game is simple, get the rocket to set down gently on an ocean-going platform using only the WASD keys before its limited fuel supply runs out. Now try it without giving yourself a coronary.
ICYMI: Turbine sunbather, NASA stress test and an aquatic hedge trimmer
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-447825").style.display="none";}catch(e){} Today on In Case You Missed It, Usain Bolt may be the "fastest man on Earth" but he can't outrun a cameraman on a Segway. An amatuer drone pilot stumbles across a sunbather 200 feet above the ground. NASA puts its 3D-printed rocket engine pump through a grueling series of tests. The UK showcases its amphibious weedwhacker and some delightfully demented genius has recreated the Pokemon theme song within Grand Theft Auto V. If you come across any interesting videos, we'd love to see them. Just tweet us with the #ICYMI hashtag @engadget or @mskerryd. And if you just want to heap praise on your handsome guest host, feel free to hit him up @mr_trout.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash was due to co-pilot error (updated)
After nearly 9 months of investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board has an official explanation for Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo crash. As suspected, the accident happened when the co-pilot triggered the "feathering" system (moving the tail wings to increase drag for reentry) well below the intended Mach 1.4 speed -- the premature resistance led to the suborbital craft breaking up and plummeting into the Mojave Desert. More details are forthcoming, but Virgin Galactic says that it welcomes the findings. Hopefully, the lessons learned prevent future accidents and keep private spaceflight on track. Update: The NTSB has published the full ruling, and says that there also wasn't enough done to either prevent this mistake or educate pilots about what would happen. Even the FAA is partly to blame, since it didn't check to make sure that the requirements behind a hazard waiver were implemented properly. In other words, the co-pilot's slip-up was the last piece of a larger puzzle. [Image credit: AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu]
Skype bug crashes the messaging app on Android, iOS and Windows
Skype users aren't safe from app-crashing messages, too. VentureBeat has discovered through the service's community forums that the app suffers from a bug similar to Apple's texting flaw. If you recall, that one crashes the Messages app when it receives a specific string of Unicode characters. It's even easier to put Skype out of commission: all it takes is sending or receiving "http://:" without the quotes. The flaw affects Skype for Windows, iOS and Android in different situations. For instance, it crashes the Windows app if you're the sender and completely kills it if it's the one receiving that string of characters. However, the iOS and the Android apps are only affected when they're the recipient, and Skype for Mac seems to be immune from the issue. Update: Skype says it has released patched clients for all affected platforms, hit the download page to make sure you've got the latest version.
AeroMobil's flying car prototype crashes mid-test
AeroMobil may have its work cut out for it if it's going to deliver a practical flying car within two years. Unfortunately, inventor Stefan Klein crashed a prototype in Slovakia this weekend after it entered an unrecoverable tailspin during a test flight. While the pilot thankfully managed to activate his vehicle's parachute in time and avoid any serious injuries, the machine wasn't so lucky -- as you can see above, it wasn't about to drive away. The company is optimistic about the accident in a statement, arguing that it's a "natural part" of testing that will help refine the design. It'll no doubt be a learning experience, but something tells us that the official roadmap doesn't include wrecking an aircraft. This is going to be a setback, even if it's relatively minor. [Image credit: MH, SME.sk]
Russia's broken ISS supply vessel burns up in the atmosphere
An out-of-control Russian spacecraft has finally met its demise after re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Progress M-27M was supposed to perform a resupply mission with the ISS, but ground control quickly lost contact after its launch on April 28th. Since then, the craft has been orbiting and slowly descending towards the Earth due to natural atmospheric drag and the planet's gravitational pull. Now, Russia's Roscosmos space agency has confirmed that Progress M-27M broke through over the central Pacific Ocean on Friday morning (May 8th). Most of the craft is expected to have burnt up during re-entry, but there's a chance some debris survived. Engineers are still trying to work out why they lost control in the first place -- it occurred after separation with the Soyuz 2-1A rocket, although reports suggest the rocket, rather than Progress, was to blame. Thankfully, no-one was hurt and the ISS is in no immediate danger, given the crew still has plenty of supplies.
NASA's Messenger probe will crash into Mercury at 3:30pm ET today (update: it's done)
It's been a long and hard road for NASA's Messenger Probe as it studied the surface of Mercury for the last four years. That journey, however, will come to an end today, after NASA announced that the craft will crash land into the planet at around 3:30pm ET today. The vehicle was the first that managed to make it to Mercury, and has been in service for more than a decade -- far longer than administrators had ever expected it to last. In fact, the project was only meant to last for a year, but canny fuel-saving measures managed to quadruple its lifespan.
Here's video of SpaceX's rocket landing, and the explosion
Yesterday SpaceX made another unsuccessful try at landing a Falcon 9 first stage on a barge in the ocean, but the fuzzy Vine clip posted cut off right before things got exciting. Today, the company posted a longer, higher res video but quickly pulled it from YouTube. Now, you can see exactly what happens when one of those 200-foot tall rockets misses the mark. Yesterday CEO Elon Musk said the issue "should be easy to fix", and judging by the video it wasn't far off from success. If you need any more reasons to stay optimistic, SpaceX COO told DefenseNews that the company's next landing attempt may come on land instead of at sea, because of the difficulty in keeping a rocket upright on a moving barge -- as we all can now see. Update: The official video is back, and you can watch it after the break.
Study says Android 4.0 and iOS 8 are most likely to crash your apps
Ever had the feeling that certain phone operating systems are more likely to crash your apps than others? It's not just you. Crittercism has posted its latest breakdown of crash reports from about 20,000 apps, and it's clear that certain operating systems aren't as friendly as others. On Android, Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) is most likely to wreck your day; KitKat (4.4) is close behind, while Lollipop's early reputation for glitches apparently doesn't affect apps. With Apple devices, however, the tables turn. While iOS' app crash rate is lower overall, iOS 8 is a bit more problematic than its predecessor. That's not surprising given that Apple hasn't had as much time to tackle issues in 8, but you may feel better if you're still holding on to 7.
Selfies may have led to a deadly airplane crash
Taking selfies while you're driving any moving vehicle is a bad idea, especially in an aircraft -- and unfortunately, those snapshots may have cost two air travelers their lives. The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that a double-fatality Cessna 150 crash in Colorado "likely" occurred because the pilot distracted himself with cellphone self-portraits shortly after takeoff. Action camera footage from a flight just minutes earlier showed the man taking selfies -- investigators believe it's no big stretch to suggest that he repeated this mistake on his final voyage.
Elite: Dangerous server goes haywire, creates instant billionaires [Updated]
The Elite: Dangerous server has had a relatively smooth launch since it released just over two weeks ago, but all that changed last night when the server went absolutely haywire. A suspected transaction server failure caused a whole slew of bizarre bugs for those playing the game last night, from benign errors like players getting disconnected to catastrophic failures like deleting a ship's entire cargo, rolling back ship upgrades, and deleting credits. The worst problems involved players having ghost cargo that could be sold over and over again, allowing them to rack up millions of credits in minutes. Though the problems were reported promptly, the server wasn't rebooted until its usual maintenance period over six hours later. In a feat of remarkably bad timing, the server problems happened on a national holiday in the UK, and so the developers at Frontier were taking time off to celebrate the new year. There has been no official announcement on the problems yet, and players are speculating on the damage that would be caused or reversed if Frontier performed a server rollback. Reports from the Elite forum suggest that developers may not be back to work until as late as January 5th, at which point it's unlikely that developers will roll the server back. The damage from last night's errors continues to cause problems today. One player was left shipless and unable to log in when the server reversed a ship purchase transaction, and another's ship teleported back across the galaxy and is being held hostage at a station with no shipyard. Dozens of players have reported broken cargo holds or missing cargo and credits, and one player logged in this morning to find 5 billion credits sitting in his wallet. These events have naturally prompted a resurgence of complaints about Elite's always-online gameplay, as players have found themselves unable to play without problem even in solo mode. We have reached out to Frontier for comment.
Assassin's Creed: Unity title screen crash workaround: remove your friends
Assassin's Creed: Unity has been plagued with bugs and glitches since launch, and developer/publisher Ubisoft has already issued several patches to combat the game's problems. Still, not all the kinks have been ironed out. For example, if you're experiencing crashes at the main menu, according to a recent posting to the game's live updates blog - which details fixes and workarounds as Ubisoft discovers and releases them - you can blame your friends. "We have discovered one of the issues that may cause the game to crash at the main menu after pressing the CONTINUE button. This issue affects all platforms," Ubisoft wrote on its Unity update blog. "For players who haven't experienced this issue, we highly recommend you take the following steps to prevent a crash: Do not add any IN-GAME RECENT PLAYER as a GAME CONTACT. If you already have GAME CONTACTS ... remove them." Ubisoft writes that a fix is in the works. In the meantime, in the city of Paris, we are all strangers. [Image: Ubisoft]
WWE 2K15's 'My Career' mode crashing Xbox One systems
WWE 2K15 launched off the top ropes and into Xbox One and PS4 systems this week, and was met with a number of technical issues as it landed. Polygon reported that Xbox One versions of the game crashed during multiple attempts to play My Career mode, a game-breaking problem listed by others on 2K's official support forums. One player discovered a trick that appeared to solve the issue: Disconnecting their system from the Internet seemed to make My Career mode available to them. 2K's support team addressed other concerns, such as instances where PS4 players are unable to download add-on content like the Sting and Hulk Hogan characters. Additionally, the publisher offered a guide for players stuck on the game's demo match, which happens for those downloading the launch update at the same time. We've reached out to 2K for information on the game's early issues and will update as we learn more. [Image: 2K]
An ArcheAge player found a way to kill the servers at will
It's never a good day when you see players on the forums boasting about causing server crashes. In nearly every single case, it's a matter of someone bragging about doing something with no actual proof as a bit of pointless ego boosting. What's worse, of course, is when a player posts about causing a crash and claiming it can be replicated... and then proceeds to do exactly that, demonstrating that the server can be crashed at will. This is apparently what happened to ArcheAge. User ArchegeDown posted a thread on the forums on Friday, stating that a specific bug was responsible for bringing down the servers and that it needed to be fixed. To prove these claims, the user caused two more server crashes at scheduled times, demonstrating the ability, with the stated intent being to simply get Trion's attention. The thread is currently locked, but it's possible that subsequent server crashes are a result of other players discovering the same method of inciting a server crash. [Thanks to xpactor and Matt for the tip!]
